Are two heads better than one? Investigating the influence of collaboration on creativity
View/ Open
Abstract
Creativity and collaboration are considered fundamental skills for student success in STEM Education (Karimi & Pina, 2021) and are consistently among the top-ranked skills for employers (Flaherty, 2021). To assess creativity, the Remote Association Task (RAT) is an increasingly used tool to measure creative problem-solving (Wu et al., 2021). However, no research has systematically investigated the effectiveness of working collaboratively versus individually using this measure. The current research evaluates how collaboration impacts creative problem-solving using the RAT. Participants worked collaboratively or individually to solve 20 RAT problems (Experiments 1-2) and completed a later, individual test that involved the same 20 RAT problems and 20 novel RAT problems (Experiment 2). Outcomes suggest collaboration lowers performance during initial problem solving, but may benefit later, individual problem solving. Evaluating how best to support creative processes in the context of collaboration has implications for supporting student success and helping them develop highly applicable skills.